I Do (Hate You) by Sienna Blake
James
The Present…
I woke up in a pool of drool, with someone jackhammering my head. I put up my hand to gingerly touch the back of my head and found a big goose egg instead of a jackhammer, but it still felt like hell. As I sat up, I thought maybe the drool wasn’t there either, but that part was real.
My memory of where I was and why I was there took a few seconds to kick in and another few more before I remembered the manila folder with the photos. I patted around and looked under the desk and bed and in the safe, but they were gone.
“Son of a bitch,” I said out loud, then winced at the pain of talking.
With those photos and my attacker gone, I was right back where I started, unable to prove a damn thing. The only way I could get Shell to believe me now was if Natazia confessed the affair with Rupert right in front of her.
If it worked, it would finally expose the truth. If it didn’t, then Shell and her entire family and all our friends would hate me forever.
Great. No pressure.
I ran down the path to the groom’s complex of villas. I knew that Natazia’s room was right next to Clive’s. I hoped like hell that he was already at the beach where the wedding was being held. I banged on the side door of the villa as loudly as possible until I heard a voice let out a string of Russian words, then say in accented English, “O-kay. I’m coming.”
When Natazia opened up, she was in the same robe I’d seen her wearing the other night, but this time it was belted shut. She smiled when she saw me. “This is a surprise. You turned me down at your villa and now you come to mine?”
“Natazia, the reason I came is…”
“It’s okay. I don’t ask questions. Other than how do you like these?” She pulled her sash which opened the silk robe, exposing those enormous breasts. “Good, no?”
“They are…um…they are spectacular. And the old me would not have been able to resist them, but I have something important to talk to you about. If you’d just close that robe back up, I think I’ll be able to, uh…focus a bit better.”
She harrumphed as she tied up her robe. “I’m getting feeling when you texted me come over last night, it wasn’t for sexy time.”
It hit me with a wave of relief that she was right. I must not have texted her for a booty call. I must have wanted to talk about those photos in the other folder that Tillie had seen me carrying at the club two nights ago.
If Natazia was in on the kidnapping and knocking me unconscious just now, then she would know I didn’t have the photos labeled “COPY” that I’d had at the club or the originals that I’d pulled out of the safe today.
But if she wasn’t, I might bluff her into a confession.
“That’s right, Natazia, that text wasn’t for sex, it was to tell you I had proof of your affair with Rupert, and you might as well admit it.”
Not bad for a bluff.
“What proof?” she asked, crossing her arms in defiance.
Shit. She was even better at this game than Clive.
I crossed my arms too. “Photos. I have photos of you two getting cozy in a hotel room.”
“Show me photos.”
Shit shit shit.
“I would, but uh, I don’t have them on me right now. I just need you to get dressed, come down to the beach, find Shell and tell her about the affair. Easy. If you just jump into some clothes and grab a pair of shoes, we can head down there now.”
“To the beach.”
“Yes.”
“To tell my boss’s fiancée that I am screwing him.”
“That’s right.”
“Which will immediately get me fired.”
“Um, well, that probably would be the result, but you might have a real uh, human resources situation that could be…”
“Goodbye, crazy man. I admit nothing. You can prove nothing. Go away.”
Natazia slammed the door in my face. I could hear her laughing as she walked down the hall.
What the hell could I do? The wedding was about to start, I had no proof and Shell was about to make the biggest mistake of her life. And maybe mine.
If I called Shell, I could at least stall her long enough to get down to the beach before the ceremony started. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to go to my contacts and noticed I had a missed call from last night when my phone was still behind Clive’s toilet.
The call I’d missed was from Matthew Edmonds. He was the Whitehaven CEO, the company that Rupert and I were competing over for a contract that was worth millions. Weird that the CEO would call me because Rupert and I had both told him we weren’t doing business over the wedding weekend. I just wanted a three-day vacation but I knew Shell had demanded that Rupert stop working long enough to get married.
I looked deeper in my call log and saw that Matthew and I had also talked two nights ago for about five minutes, during the time that I now couldn’t remember.
Matthew Edmonds was a standup guy, and I knew he wouldn’t call without a reason, so I hit redial on my phone. Once his secretary tracked him down, I asked him if he could tell me what we spoke about two nights ago and also why he’d tried to call me again last night when he just got my voicemail.
“You, um, don’t remember?” he asked, clearly confused.
Over the last few months of negotiations, I’d done my best to make him think that I was a hard-charging, thorough, brilliant businessman. I was sure I sounded like an idiot now since I couldn’t remember even basic details from a conversation we had less than forty-eight hours ago.
How did I even navigate this? I definitely didn’t sound like someone you’d trust to guide a multi-million-dollar deal, but telling him I’d been drugged and kidnapped probably wouldn’t instill confidence either.
Fuck it, I didn’t care anymore.
“I just need a refresher, Matthew. Can you give me a rundown of what we talked about?”
“Well, I told you about Rupert planning to put in a second offer for the contract, which he did yesterday. I gave you until today to put in a counteroffer. You’re just in time.”
Matthew kept talking about the deal and how it was going to transform his company, but I wasn’t listening. I had just figured out the motive for my getting drugged and kidnapped.
And it changed everything.
Shell was about to marry a man who would stop at nothing to win a deal. I knew that Clive must have performed the actual crime, but the motive belonged to Rupert.
If Rupert was putting in another bid, he’d have a pretty good shot at winning the contract, but if he made sure that his competition—namely me—was out of commission, then he’d have a 100 percent chance of winning it.
Matthew snapped me back to our conversation when he said, “I’m all ready for that counteroffer, James. What have you got?”
Nothing. I had nothing. And I realized I didn’t care.
“I’m sorry, Matthew, but I don’t have one.”
He sounded shocked. “Well, you’ve still got a few hours before the deadline. Think you could put something together?”
“I’ve got something more important to do. I’ve got to stop a wedding.”
I was already at a dead run before I hung up the phone.
* * *
“James! James! Where are you going, mate?”
Logan’s voice rang out when I got to the edge of the path that led from the villas onto the beach. Oh, thank God. If I could get him on my side, then he could help stop the wedding. Shell was always suspicious of me, but she definitely trusted her big brother.
I did a ninety-degree turn on the sand and sprinted toward him, sweating through my suit jacket.
“You look like a man who could use a beer,” Logan said with good cheer, passing me a bottle from a tiki bar set up on the beach for the reception after the wedding. “Are you worried you’ll miss the big event? We still have a few minutes.”
“Thank God,” I panted.
“And you don’t need to be this formal, take off that jacket and roll up those sleeves.”
“I guess I wasn’t sure about the dress code,” I said, stripping off the jacket and chucking it behind the bar.
“Definitely a laid-back vibe. It’s a beach wedding!”
“I hope not,” I said,
“You hope…what now?”
“There can’t be a wedding, Logan. We need to call it off.”
Logan put his beer down on the bar. “What are you up to, James? I know you’re anti-commitment and anti-marriage, but you can’t just go busting up weddings for no reason. Especially my little sister’s.”
I took a long pull of beer before launching into my explanation, hoping for liquid courage.
“I’ve got plenty of reasons. Big reasons! Rupert is not who you think he is, Logan. His bodyguard drugged Shell and me two nights ago, then kidnapped us. We escaped but it took us until this morning to bust out of those handcuffs.”
His expression went from concern to horror. “Handcuffs? You’ve been handcuffed to my sister for two days?”
“Yes! We thought it was the stripper’s handcuffs, but it turns out they were real handcuffs.”
“Because that makes it so much better.”
“Well, the stripper was pretty relieved to know he still had his own cuffs. But anyway, I think we’re getting off track here about what went down.”
“Wait a minute. You were handcuffed to my sister even when you were having an orgy with Natazia and the flight hostess in your room? What the hell, James?”
“No, no. Nooooo. That never happened. You just got the wrong impression. There never were any other women in my room. Well, I mean Natazia did come to my villa in her underwear, but she never made it past the porch.”
“You had sex with Natazia on your porch?!”
“No! I didn’t want to and I’m sure your sister wouldn’t have let me.” I held my hand up and pointed to my wrist.
“Because you were still handcuffed to Shell.”
“Exactly!”
I’d thought that we were getting on the same page, but by the look on Logan’s face, I realized we were…not. So not.
I started sweating again and rolled up my sleeves. This was not going as planned.
“Have you been drinking today? This sounds like a fever dream or fantasy or maybe just a made-up excuse to mess up Shell’s big day. I know you hate Rupert, but she loves him and that’s what’s important,” he said, picking up his own beer again.
I scanned the beach while we talked, looking for a beautiful redhead in a long white dress. Shell would tell Logan I was an asshole, but she could at least confirm the handcuffing and drugging part.
“It sounds crazy, but I’m not making any of it up, Logan.”
He rolled his eyes, then put up his hands as if in surrender. “Okay. Fine. Let’s say it all happened. Let’s say for argument’s sake that this story of yours—that sounds completely made up—let’s say it’s true. You said it was Clive who did the drugging and, uh, kidnapping?”
“Yes. Just go ask Shell. She’ll confirm it. Well, most of it. It probably needs to be you because I don’t think she’s talking to me right now.”
“Sure. And you have proof?”
“Feel the back of my head! I just got knocked unconscious,” I said, taking Logan’s hand that wasn’t holding the beer and poking the lump on my head with it. “Ow, ow, ow. You feel that goose egg back there?”
“I do feel a lump,” he admitted. “So, in addition to being drugged and kidnapped two days ago, today you got assaulted?”
“And robbed!”
“Of what?”
He was getting it now. “The proof!” I shouted.
“Of course you were. Proof of what?”
“That Rupert was having an affair with Natazia,” I said, trying to sound appropriately sad but of course secretly happy that it might be the nail in Rupert’s coffin. Logan had said that I couldn’t date Shell since I was such a player, but Rupert was so much worse.
“I thought Natazia showed up at your villa in her underwear. If she’s having an affair with Rupert, why wasn’t she at his villa in her underwear?”
Good question.
“I’m not really sure,” I said, trying to decipher if Logan’s look of concern was for Shell’s future or my sanity.
His next sentence gave me my answer. Logan put both his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Mate, I don’t know how you hit your head, but I think you may have a concussion. This story just doesn’t make sense. Here, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“I do not have a concussion! This is very real!” I yelled, but Logan kept his fingers up. “Okay, fine. You’re holding up four fingers.”
“Good, good,” he said in a tone you’d use with a toddler. “Now, do you have a headache or nausea?”
“I am fine! And Rupert is behind it all. We have to stop this wedding!”
The beer tub girl at the tiki hut jumped at my yelling. She had a look of fear on her face as if my kind of crazy might be catching.
I lowered my voice to a loud whisper. “Rupert must be up to his eyeballs in all of this, Logan.”
“I thought you said Clive did it. What does Rupert have to do with it?” Logan asked.
“Clive was protecting him. I had a private investigator look into Rupert for the Whitehaven deal, and he sent me photos of Rupert with Natazia in a hotel room,” I said.
“Were they having sex in the photos?” Logan asked, finally sounding scandalized.
“No.”
“Kissing?”
“No.”
“Hugging?”
“No, but…”
“What were they doing?” Logan asked.
“Rupert was in real close as she closed the curtains in the hotel room.”
Logan blinked. “Okay, that’s pretty suss. But that’s not actual proof of cheating, James. It’s certainly not good motive for drugging and kidnapping someone.”
“There are two motives here. To cover up Rupert’s cheating and to win the Whitehaven deal. Someone—I think Clive—hit me on the head today to get the second copy of the photos. They already stole one copy two nights ago.”
“Okay,” Logan said, dragging out the words, trying to take that statement in. “Then what’s the motive for the drugging and kidnapping?”
“That was so I wouldn’t put in a counteroffer on the Whitehaven deal. It is worth tens of millions of dollars, Logan. With me out of the way until the deadline for a counteroffer passes today, Rupert will win that contract.”
“Is that what this is all about?” Logan asked.
“What do you mean?”
Logan signaled the beer tub girl for another bottle and asked, “Are you mad about losing out on the contract?”
“I don’t give a damn about the contract. I only care about…”
I didn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t.
“You only care about what?” Logan asked, popping the top on his new beer.
Was I about to say “Shell?” “I only care about Shell?” I needed time to think this all through, but I had to stop this wedding first or none of it would matter.
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish a few times, trying to explain the feelings that I didn’t really understand myself. Finally, Logan spoke again.
“James, this all sounds like fantasy. You have got to face the fact that Shell is in love with Rupert.”
“Rupert isn’t in love with Shell! Or at least he’s not in love with her enough to stay faithful. If she were mine, do you think I would ever touch Natazia? No way.”
Logan’s expression went from disbelief to something closer to compassion. “Look, uh, James. I’ve waved you away from Shell all this time because I thought you were a player who could never commit to one woman. You’ve said it yourself a thousand times. Are you saying you have real feelings for my sister?”
Was that what I was saying?
Was it?